News

Unclear Picture on Afghan Forces Persists

—Marc V. Schanz6/10/2015

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The
special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction has never done a “full
blown assessment” on the health, capabilities, and disposition of the Afghan
National Security Forces, SIGAR John Sopko told reporters in Washington, D.C., on
Tuesday. Though
SIGAR did go head-to-head with the Department of Defense over “bogus” data and
information on the Afghan military earlier this year, Sopko said there are still
large gaps of knowledge regarding the Afghan military’s size, strength,
presence, and disposition. “The big problem is, although they are fighting and bleeding all over
the country ... we don’t know as a government how well a job they can do,”
Sopko said. Now that the drawdown has taken place, the US has little visibility
at even the “kandak,” or battalion level, of the Afghan Army. “We just have no
presence,” he said. “I can’t give you an answer, and I don’t think our military
can either,” at least not in an unclassified setting, he noted. The lack of
understanding of numbers and data is concerning because of the influence they
have on gauging funding and prioritization. “If you don’t have the numbers
right, the whole thing is skewed,” he said.